


Harvest

by InyriAscending



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-29
Updated: 2009-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:25:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InyriAscending/pseuds/InyriAscending
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2177, fifty-one Alliance soldiers landed on a planet called Akuze. This is their story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1: Strange World

**Author's Note:** In most of my works, Shepard was the hero of the Elysium Blitz of 2178. This piece is a departure from that continuity, placing her instead on Akuze in 2177- but I think the story merits telling. I hope you agree.

 _Mass Effect_ and associated characters are property of Bioware. The men and women of the _SSV Montreal_ are my own.

Edited for continuity, 4/30/2009. Thanks for the pickup, guys.

* * *

 **Harvest**

 **Part 1: Strange World**

 _March 12, 2177  
Day 1_

 _What a lousy place for a colony_. Clouds of dust unfurl like banners beneath the treads of the Grizzly as it rolls off the cruiser onto the yellow-brown soil of Akuze. The unit's new Makos cut smoothly across the terrain a few dozen meters ahead, making their way toward the tiny cluster of buildings on the horizon. Shepard likes the Makos. They're sleeker, more streamlined, more maneuverable than the obsolete Grizzlys- which, of course, is why the lieutenants commandeered all three. _No trees anywhere, no green plants- and they were hoping to farm here? At least Mindoir had trees_.

With all the transports unloaded, the hatch closes and the engines of the _SSV Montreal_ roar to life. As the ship vanishes above the cloudline, the radio comes alive with a sharp pop and a burst of static; the speakers squeal in protest at Lieutenant Roberts' voice. She winces, and turns the volume down.

"Is he always that loud?" Corporal Doran, manning the guns, covers her ears and makes a face.

Shepard simply rolls her eyes at the radio as the briefing begins. "Welcome to Akuze, ladies and gentlemen. As one of humanity's newest colonies at only five months old, this was to be an agricultural experiment in soil suitability- as you will probably smell if you take your helmets off, the dirt here is full of sulfur." At the edge of her peripheral vision, she can see Gonzales accompanying the speech with inappropriate hand gestures. She tries not to snort too loud. "At last count there were seventy-three residents in Akuze's only settlement, Mount Moriah. This name was apparently a joke on the part of the colony founders, since the planet is actually quite flat."

The transports continue their trek across the surface as Roberts' voice drones on; she keeps her eyes focused on the slowly enlarging settlement until the interesting part of the briefing starts. "So- why are we here, I can hear you asking? There has been no communication from anyone on Akuze for five days. The last known message marked the arrival of a resupply ship, which departed as planned on March 6 and has already made its next scheduled stop. Since that time, repeated attempts to raise the colony by radio and video have gone unanswered. Our task is to locate the colonists and, if necessary, assist them in repair of their communications assembly. I will assign individual group tasks when we arrive at the settlement." The speakers shut off and the sigh of relief that follows practically shakes the Grizzly.

"So... we're AV repairmen now?" Private Thompson asks from his seat at the rear of the tank. "With all due respect, Chief, this isn't the kind of thing I enlisted to do."

Before she can answer, there's the _thud_ of fingertips against something hollow and a grumble of protest from Thompson. "Shut the hell up, man. For all you know they got kidnapped by batarians or enslaved by a bunch of nymphomaniac asari or eaten by space cows or something. I bet it'll be interesting, no matter what." Shepard has to turn around to place the voice- another of the new privates. Carpenter, she thinks.

"Space cows, Carpenter?" she asks, mildly.

"Yes, ma'am. Space cows." No one can keep a straight face after that, and Shepard waits for the laughter to fade before she responds.

"We'll see. And Thompson... this is exactly the sort of thing we do. Anytime you stop getting comms- from anyone, Private, I don't care if it's a colony or your scouting party- you check it out." Five seconds of silence go by; she sighs, shrugs. "That's enough lecture for now, at any rate. A word of advice, though- don't take your helmet off when we get there. Trust me."

The rest of the ride to the settlement is uneventful, and they pile out of the Grizzly to join the rest of the unit. As they stand in formation, Shepard does a quick head count- three lieutenants, seven chiefs of various flavors, ten corporals, fifteen privates (first class), sixteen FNGs. All present and accounted for. _What a unit. Two-thirds of our officers fresh from OCS and half the privates just out of Basic_. It seems like an eternity ago that she was in their position, wide-eyed and eager to prove herself. Skinny little farmgirl Shepard, from Mindoir to foster care to the military; five years and twenty pounds of muscle later, she has plenty of commendations and precious little closure but at least it's something.

Akuze is even less pleasant now that she's outside the transport; it's hot inside her hardsuit and the wind kicks up dust to cloud her visor. Mount Moriah (the name rings a bell but she can't place it) is unimpressive, even to her- a cluster of prefabricated shelters, a few larger buildings, and a tarpaulin-covered empty garage make up the majority of the settlement, with a single landing pad a few hundred meters distant. She cannot see the fields from here... they must be just over the rise, blocked by the buildings and the gentle slope of the hill. The buildings are still and silent; she sees nothing moving within.

"Shepard, you'll take... ah, who was in your Grizzly?" The lieutenant strolls over; she bites her tongue to keep from saying something foolish.

"Sir, that would be Cooper, Doran, Gonzales, Carpenter, O'Reilly, Singh, and Thompson. In order of rank. Sir."

"Yes, of course. Take that group and reconnoiter those three buildings-" he points, "then report back in to Lieutenant Phillips with any pertinent information. Any questions, Chief?" His word choices remind her of Gunny Ellison, sometimes. _If he ever uses the word pusillanimous, so help me God..._

"No, sir." He moves on, and Shepard beckons her team in close. "You heard the man. We'll take each building as a complete team. I know that for some of you, this is your first real mission, so if you have questions as we go I want to hear them. Clear?"

Helmet-clad heads move up and down in unison as the group falls in together, jogging toward the garage. On second glance, as on first, it's a standard-looking building with no rips or tears in the heavy fabric sides. She takes a few steps under the overhang, then turns to face the others. "Can anyone tell me how many vehicles were parked here- not you, Cooper... Private Singh, what the hell are you doing?"

He's on his hands and knees, retching into the dirt with his helmet rolling on the ground beside him. "LT said the air was ok to breathe, so I- oh, _fuck_ , it smells so bad..." He vomits, then looks up at her pathetically. "I just wanted to- ugh." Shepard reaches his side in a few quick strides, scoops his helmet under one arm and slams it back on his head in one swift motion. She motions to Doran, who slips her arms beneath Singh's and hauls the man to his feet.

"Sulfur, Private Singh. Sulfur. I told you not to take your helmet off, and if you puke in it now it's your own damn problem." Hand on her hip, she surveys the rest of the team. "Anyone else got any bright ideas, or is someone going to answer my question? You have sixty seconds."

The privates scatter to all corners of the garage, staring intently at the dirt. Cooper smirks at her behind his visor; she grins and gives him the finger as Carpenter comes running back eagerly. "Seven vehicles, Chief Shepard, and they all went that way.. um, east. I think."

 _Very good. This one's got promise._ "Correct, Private Carpenter." She can't help but smile at the girl's enthusiasm- it reminds her too much of herself. "Probably out toward the fields- we'll check our other two buildings first, though. What have we figured out so far, team?"

Gonzales speaks up, this time. "Well, they had a decent amount of transportation, and they took all the vehicles somewhere and didn't come back. Or someone did, anyway- and all the antennas are on that one building, so they probably didn't go to fix the communications equipment."

Again, Shepard nods approvingly. "Unless someone broke it after everyone else was gone... overall, though, I agree with that assessment. Let's move on."

The door slides open automatically as the group approaches the next building- _so we've still got power, which rules out one possibility_. One of the larger structures in the settlement on the outside, on the inside she finds it about half-full of wooden and composite crates and loaded pallets. _And they didn't run out of food- but we knew that from the supply ship's report._ Farm equipment, seeds, fertilizer... containers of water, processed rations, medical supplies, grenades, power cells- "Grenades?"

"I thought you had the grenades, Chief," Doran yells from across the room.

"Sorry, I was talking to myself. I do have the grenades, but there's an empty crate over here with that label- why the hell do a bunch of farmers need a box of grenades? We didn't get briefed about any major predators." She sees two of the privates exchange looks-

"Damn it!" She hits the floor as the sound of the gunshot echoes off the warehouse's metal walls. "Everyone, report- what was that?"

"Nothing here, Shepard."

"Clear."

"No targets visualized, Chief."

"All quiet on the western front, ma'am."

"I've got nothing."

"Negative contacts."

Someone's laughing, over near the door- loud and long, with the faintest tinge of hysteria mixed in. "Oh- oh, man. S-s-sorry, Chief- it just jumped at me, and I thought- I thought... I just shot at it, I'm sorry- _madre de Dios_..." _Gonzales_. Shepard's up and moving before she can even process what's been said.

"What jumped at you, Gonzales? Talk to me, Private." He's on his back, sprawled over a crate with his Kessler still in his hand, and gestures up at the rafters. She squints. "I don't see anything."

He holsters the pistol, shuddering to recapture his lost breath. "I think it was a cat, ma'am." And there it is, grey-furred against the dull metal sheen of the roof- a cat, complete with what looks to be a blue collar.

 _Oh,_ fuck _me_. Only the fact that she is still wearing her helmet prevents her from slapping her own forehead. She grinds her teeth against every statement that comes immediately to mind that's more than fifty percent profanity and finally settles on something mostly appropriate.

"An empty box of grenades and Gonzales' new pet- productive search, ladies and gentlemen. Now get outside before we find the rest of the zoo." The rest of the team emerges from cover and make their way over to the exit, teasing Gonzales as they step outside; Shepard gives him a halfhearted shove into the afternoon light and closes the door on the errant animal.

The third building they were given is mostly living quarters- twelve little rooms connected by showers and toilet stalls, with only a scant few photographs taped to consoles to mark each room as belonging to any one person. She pauses for a moment, studying a few of the images; a pretty blonde woman holding a young child waves from one, holds hands with a dark-haired man in another. The console in this room contains only personal mail, the last dated three days ago and unread until she clicks on it and even then it's a simple love-letter- no mention of problems, attacks, anything out of the ordinary in any of the messages and nothing her omni-tool can pick up, either. The chatter she hears over the comms suggests that the other rooms are much the same: all vacant of their owners and all unhelpful. With each room cleared, they converge in the long hallway and move toward the back of the dormitory.

There's a second team already searching through cabinets when Shepard and her squad reach the kitchen. "Bring back any memories, Shepard?" Gunnery Chief Adams grins at her from inside the tiny pantry as she peers through the door.

(It wasn't a pantry, though- it was the janitor's closet at Club Zero on Arcturus. They were nineteen, fresh from the medical bay after their first combat injuries and hopped up on adrenaline and two-credit tequila shots. He'd ripped the back of her shirt lifting it over her bandaged shoulder, then spent fifteen minutes afterward trying to piece it back together with a roll of electrical tape they'd found; it didn't work, so they just covered each other in tape and called it a fashion statement when they stumbled back onto the dance floor together. Nothing formal had ever come out of it, though every once in a while she'll find a piece of tape stuck across her locker door and they lock themselves in one of the showers to blow off a little steam- they're just friends, at the end of the day.)

"I told you, Mike, I can't be held responsible for what I do when I'm drunk." But Shepard grins back at him and reaches out to thump her fist against his. Singh and O'Reilly look confused- then again, they usually look confused. She again reminds herself that they're still in the phase where the hardest part of a firefight is making sure you don't shoot yourself in the foot while running. "And I thought we had this building. Find anything?"

"Not a damn thing- it's like they sat down to dinner, went outside to check out a noise and just wandered off." He shrugs. "Left the main vid-phone off the hook and everything. And as for the double coverage, blame the LT for sloppy pointing." The rest of Adams' team peers through the door opposite hers; he waves them off. "We cleared the far side, but we've got one more building to do, anyway- catch you in a few." The door slides closed behind him as he follows his team's retreat.

She turns to the team clustered behind her. "Alright, let's figure out where we are as we walk. Thoughts?"

"Well, ma'am..." Thompson speaks up. "There's no one here, and they took their vehicles and a whole box of grenades somewhere, right? If this were a mystery vid, we'd figure out where they were going and follow them-"

"And then get eaten." Cooper grins.

"By space cows." Private Carpenter finishes the thought, and Shepard can't help but laugh along with the rest of them as they make their way back to the Grizzly. She leaves the group there for a few minutes' rest while she goes to update Phillips on the results of their search.

Second Lieutenant Phillips, leaning against one of the Makos, waves as she approaches. "Hey, Shepard. Anything interesting?" She's liked Phillips so far- the lieutenant only joined the unit in January fresh from the Academy and they've been patrolling this system ever since, but she seems competent and listens to her crew; she wouldn't have said either of those about Roberts, and she's served under him ever since Basic.

"Vehicles are gone, ma'am, all headed eastward, and there's an empty box of grenades in one of the warehouses. Otherwise.. no, ma'am. Nothing on any of the consoles we found, and no one located, alive or otherwise." She cracks her knuckles through the gloves of her hardsuit. "What's the next step?"

"We head east, I think. Let your squad rest for a while- we'll all head out together once the other teams regroup. How's the batch of new recruits you've got?" Phillips gestures to the tread next to her; Shepard sits, turning to face the other woman.

"A little green, ma'am, but they'll manage. I keep reminding myself that I was in their position, once... mostly it keeps me from going drill instructor on them." She leans back against the side of the Mako and closes her eyes.

"I've read your file; I doubt you were ever in their position. You're a good soldier, Shepard-" the lieutenant trails off mid-sentence. "Damn, there's Roberts. Better get ready to move."

"You, too?" She grins as the woman simply shrugs. "See you in a few, ma'am."

It takes another ten minutes to load everyone in and get the transports moving, but finally the Grizzly crests the last hill and- _oh, Jesus._ What once must have been neatly plowed fields are now studded with craters and holes and the smoldering remains of half a dozen vehicles. She pulls the Grizzly up short and stares for a moment as her mind flips through all the pages of xenobiology she's managed to cram in over five years; nothing fits with what she sees. This, whatever it is, is something new.

Half a dozen voices ring out together over the radio, offering suggestions- everything from nathaks to orbital strikes.

"Probably just colonist infighting." But Roberts doesn't sound certain. "There were no reports of predators on this planet. Everyone, out and in formation."

Patel and Phillips are both arguing with the senior lieutenant by the time the rest of the unit forms up, and Shepard does her best not to listen though she's a scant few feet from the trio. At this distance and without the vision constraints of the Grizzly, she can barely see the crumpled black-clad forms scattered between the rows; she bites her lip, hard, to keep the memories away.

( _"What's your name, young lady?" The soldier leans down, wipes the blood from her forehead. Behind his visor his eyes are kind._

 _"Tana, sir. Tana Shepard." They walk so fast with the stretcher that all she can see are the black bags- rows and rows of them- and then she cannot see anything except her own tears.)  
_  
"And I'm telling you, sir, that something attacked these people. The craters, the slagged tractors- whatever it was must have hit the field crew first. Someone got word back to the settlement, the rest of them came driving up with the grenades and they all got killed anyway... shit. What a mess." Patel sighs.

"I'm reserving judgment until I see the bodies. Get out there and get this place cleaned up. You too, Phillips." The lieutenant turns on his heel and strides back to the Mako.

With two members of each team left to man the cannons ("if you see anything pop up in the middle of the field or swoop down from the sky, shoot first and panic later") the rest of the unit picks its way carefully across the broken ground and the broken machinery. The dead colonists are everywhere, now that she's close enough to really see- beneath the crumpled machines and vehicles, thrown halfway across the fields- and some are gut-wrenchingly disfigured.

Carpenter stops working for a minute and just stands, staring at something beyond Shepard's view, then grabs Thompson's arm and points. He stops, too; she gives the ATV she and Doran are righting one final shove into position and approaches the pair. Carpenter turns to her, wide-eyed. "He's... ugh, Chief. His face is gone." And it is- she's never seen wounds like this before with her own eyes, only in briefing videos and field manuals. The reality is terrible. The man at their feet looks like his torso was dipped in acid, and there is nothing left of his face but white bone and a few clinging shreds of muscle. "What killed all these people?"

"I'm not sure." She rests her hand on the girl's shoulder. "But the colonists didn't have armor or guns. They probably didn't know what was attacking them, or how to fight it. Who knows if they even knew how to use those grenades?" _Odd, though, that we haven't found a single one, exploded or otherwise._ "Whatever it was- it's probably gone, now, and if it comes back we'll be ready. Right, Private?" The girl gives her a weak smile, but nods and reaches beneath the dead man's arms even as Thompson lifts the legs.

All in all, they pull sixty-seven men and women from the dirt and lay them beside each other in neat rows. In the fading light of the afternoon, no one's willing to look too closely into the deep holes that dot the ground; if there are bodies within, they'll stay there, if only for a little while.

"We'll camp here tonight." Lieutenant Roberts gestures at the open space around them. "If there even is something here-" he stares right at her but she refuses to blink- "it would have attacked us by now with all the vibration from the transports. We'll move the bodies back up to the settlement in the morning and radio for the _Montreal_ from there." His tone does not bear questioning.

They unload the transports in silence and raise their tents in the shadow of the hill; the rows of black bags at the edge of the field seems to dull any urge for conversation they might once have had. Field rations are distributed and devoured, weapons are cleaned, watches are assigned until finally, the circle in the middle of the tents is still and quiet. Akuze has no moons, and flashlights guide the men and women of the unit safely to their cots.

Shepard takes first watch, and stares out into the growing dark with one hand on her pistol. Suddenly, this planet feels uncomfortably like home.


	2. Part 2: The Longest Day

**Part 2: The Longest Day**

 _March 13, 2177  
Day 2_

Shepard sleeps; someone is screaming. This does not bother her (for the last seven years, her dreams have often been punctuated by screaming)- but now her hardsuit's display greets her open eyes and the noises do not stop. She springs up off her cot and reaches for her guns, sliding the shotgun along her back until it holsters with a _click_ but keeping the pistol drawn, and gives the other three soldiers sharing her tent a quick shake before darting out through the flap into the pitch-dark night.

Every member of the middle watch is crouched along the eastern barricades, firing steadily at-

"What the fuck is that?" Cooper stumbles out of the tent, staring up alongside her at the clusters of vivid blue lights thirty meters above them. One of the watch lobs a grenade into the darkness and the flash illuminates something massive, a reddish column rising in a sinuous curve from the edge of the field.

"I think we found what killed those colonists." Even as she says the words, the rest of the unit come pouring from the tents- and, with a shriek that rattles her helmet, a second set of lights bursts from the ground into the sky. _There's more than one of these things?_

Lieutenant Roberts, finally, starts shouting orders. "Get to the transports! Try to surround them and hit them with everything you've got at close range." Shepard turns and sprints toward the Grizzly; behind her, there's an odd sound, almost a splash. The screaming picks up again, higher-pitched this time, but she doesn't turn back to look- with so many untested soldiers, someone's bound to panic in the heat of combat.

By the time the initial roar of engines fades, the screams have stopped. Carpenter moves to close the latches as the rest of the team settles into their seats, then pauses. "Chief? We're short one."

She glances back to count her crew as she tightens the harness straps. Thompson's seat is empty; she checks her hardsuit reads, where she's programmed the computer to report on each member of the group. Seven suits with full shields and life support, hers included- and one flashing warning: _SUIT NOT FOUND_. "He was on middle watch, right? I'm not reading his hardsuit." She checks again. _SUIT NOT FOUND_.

Roberts' voice comes snarling over the speakers. "Get your ass moving, Shepard. I need you backing me up out here." _Damn_.

"I'm short a man, Lieutenant. I'm not leaving until I know my whole team's safe." The engine idles; she waits.

"Move it, Chief. That's an order." The speakers click off and she slams her fist against the seat in frustration, but kicks the Grizzly into gear as Carpenter snaps the latches shut. The tank's lights illuminate the field and Roberts' and Phillips' vehicles ahead of her as they start to circle around- and finally she sees what it is they're fighting as a third creature erupts from the ground directly beneath the lead transport.

The noise over the radio is awful- screams and shouts and the grinding of metal on metal- as the thing lofts Phillips' Mako into the air like a child tossing a ball. What looked like clouds of deep blue fireflies in the earlier darkness are exposed in their headlights as its eyes and tongue, the latter lolling from a gaping maw that dwarfs the Mako even as it plummets back toward the ground. She gets a better look at the rest of it, too- less serpentine than she'd thought from her first glimpse, with overlapping plates covering its length and jointed, waving.. _are those tentacles? What are these things?-_ then loses sight of it entirely; the Mako hits the ground with an impact that rattles Shepard and her team from fifty meters away and explodes in a shower of red-hot metal and blue-white flame.

 _Oh, God._

She chokes back a shout and flinches back from the viewscreen. Over the clamor of shocked voices streaming over the radio, she can barely hear Roberts. "I'm going to ram it while it's disoriented. Get ready to fire on it when it goes down."

"Lieutenant, I don't think that's a good-" but he is already accelerating toward the closest of the creatures, so she brings the Grizzly around to find a line of sight not obscured by wreckage and fire. Behind the smoke she can still see it, rising straight into the sky and unmoving even as the lieutenant's Mako impacts it at full speed and ricochets backward. _Well, that didn't work._

She starts to turn, to tell Doran to fire up the guns- then suddenly, the thing whips around so fast she expects to hear the sound barrier break and slams down headfirst onto Roberts' vehicle. With another bone-piercing scream, it curls back on itself and disappears beneath the surface. The Mako, flattened and distorted, sparks warningly for a moment; then it, too, erupts in flames.

"Lieutenant! Lieutenant Roberts, can you hear me?" There is silence over the speakers; six teams of soldiers, wordless, await a response that Shepard knows in her gut will never come.

"Chief, what do we do?" From the back of the Grizzly, Carpenter's tremulous voice is barely audible.

 _("Jacob, what do we do?" The shouts and the sharp crack of gunfire had startled them awake and there is still straw in her hair as they stare together out the half-open barn door. At the bottom of the hill, their houses are burning; their families have been next-door neighbors since before either of them were born and now the flames rising from the roofs twine together like their interlaced fingers._

 _He squeezes her hand, almost too hard, and then reaches to lift the shotgun from its pegs at the left of the door. "Get back up in the loft, pull up the ladder and hide, okay? I'll come back for you when it's safe. I promise." She has her pocketknife and knows how to use it- she could help him, she argues with all her strength. But he is stubborn, as he always was, and in the end he goes alone._

 _When she hears the shot, a minute later, the ladder slips from her shaking hands. It hits her, hard, on the forehead before she recovers her grip and lifts it among the hay bales.)_

Shepard takes a deep breath, in and out. "We kill these things, Private, that's what we do. Help Gonzales keep the cannon loaded." She throws the gearshift into reverse as the machine gun roars to life.

The Grizzly doesn't maneuver well, and it's all she can do to keep from tipping into a crater- so she notices the burst of fluid only when it coats the starboard camera ports and the viewscreen goes half-dark. The radar's gone haywire, too, flashing anomaly warnings for two hundred meters in all directions. _That can't be right._ "Cooper, how are the shields holding up?" She has to shout over the proximity alarms and the rattle of the machine gun; Doran has her eyes locked on the targeting computer and lets go of the trigger only long enough to fire the cannon.

"Shields at one hundred percent, Chief- wait. What the hell?" Cooper's voice rises an octave. "Shields are up but seals are at twenty percent... no, ten percent- hull breach! We have hull breach!"

"What do you mean, hull breach? Nothing even hit us- ow!" Gonzales lets out a yelp of pain and pulls his hand away from the cannon's open loading tray as Shepard slams on the brakes and turns back toward him; something green and viscous drips down into the tray and sizzles on the half-loaded rounds.

"Everyone, out!" She throws off the harness in one shove. With the guns silenced, the buzz of the alarm echoes off the Grizzly's walls. "Get your weapons out and stay close- we'll make a run for the camp and get behind cover." The side latches slide open without the expected hiss of releasing seals; she kicks at the panel with a booted foot and it falls outward even as she is shoving the first of her team out into the open.

She puts twenty meters between herself and the Grizzly before it finally blows, and even then the shockwave lifts her half-airborne; her hands and knees hit the dirt hard on the rebound and she loses sight of the squad for a moment in a haze of yellow dust. She counts them again when her vision clears- _one, two, three, four, five_ \- someone else is missing but she can't tell who or where, and she runs and runs until she sees grey against yellow and throws herself behind the barricade at the camp's edge.

"Shepard?" Someone grabs her arm. "Chief, help me- the medigel won't stick, she just keeps bleeding..." Corporal Toombs points frantically at four hardsuit-clad forms, pulled a few feet away from the barricade toward the center of the camp. She gestures at Doran, already crouched behind the half-wall with the others and aiming short, controlled bursts of fire into the flamelit field; the woman nods, and starts giving orders to the newer troops. _It's Cooper missing, then- where the hell did he go?_ Toombs pulls at her arm again and she turns with him toward the wounded.

"What happened, Corporal?" On second glance, three of the four (she reads their nameplates- Kuryenko, Tanaka, Thompson- _goddamn it!_ ) are already dead, their hardsuits cracked and melted and the flesh beneath burned away. They are beyond her help and so she kneels next to the fourth.

He stumbles over the words. "We were on watch when we felt it- this vibration, like the hum of a generator but somewhere down under our feet. Smith and Winters walked out onto the field to see if something was coming and that thing... it just came up from nowhere. The rest of us were right behind the barricade when everyone started running for the tanks and when we turned to go, too- I don't know, I guess the thing spit on us or something. Lowe was running backward, still shooting, and she tripped over me. It caught her full in the chest- I tried to wipe the stuff off, put pressure on it. It ate halfway through my glove and she just kept clawing at her suit until it started coming away in her hand..." He pulls out another unit of medi-gel and opens it over the woman's torso, where bright green and bright red mingle and roil and devour the gel before it can knit together the muscles underneath. Toombs looks at her, helpless. "And she won't stop bleeding, Shepard. Oh, God..."

Though she does not touch, she can see the swift flow of blood from Lowe's shoulder and chest- not the spurt of an artery but fast and lethal enough, regardless. "And this stuff dissolved through your suit, too, when you touched it?"

He holds up his hand. "Almost all the way through my glove- and that after the bandage packs from the medical kit, ma'am."

"Then we make her comfortable, Corporal, and we get back to the line." Even as Shepard speaks, the woman mumbles something too soft to hear and her right arm, unmarred except for bloodstains, gropes in the dirt. Toombs paws through the little box for a painkiller syringe. He takes one in hand; the needle guard flips back and he bends down toward Lowe. Shepard turns her glance back to her soldiers as a few shapes stagger from the field and join the group behind the barricade.

With her attention diverted, the pistol shot comes as a surprise and she spins and points her weapon toward the sound. Toombs rocks back on his heels from his place next to the body, syringe still in hand; Lowe's right hand now holds her pistol, nuzzled squarely under her chin, and her eyes stare sightlessly through her pitted visor.

"My terms, she said." He recaps the needle, stares straight at Shepard with an intensity that disconcerts her. "'I die on my terms.' I couldn't help her... "

She takes his arm and pulls him, ever so gently, toward the barricade. "We-" she emphasizes the word, careful and deliberate- "couldn't help her, Toombs, and I'm sorry for that- but we can still help them." With her other hand, she gestures eastward. "I need you to stay focused, Corporal."

He nods, and they fit themselves into empty spaces in the line; there are perhaps ten soldiers behind the portable barriers, still firing steadily toward the groupings of blue lights. She tries to track all of the creatures- at least three are visible at any one time and she shouts a constant stream of directions and warnings into her comm, hoping that anyone still in a transport can hear her and stay clear of the things.

But the damage is done, it seems. One by one, the transports not already burning grind to a halt, and then they are easy prey for the creatures' assaults. A scant few soldiers make it clear of their destroyed Grizzlies and come running frantically toward the camp- one lofts herself into the air and Shepard drops her gun long enough to help haul the girl over the barricade. Patel's Mako is the last to stop firing, some thirty meters from the camp, and only one figure emerges from the smoke surrounding it to limp toward them as a final explosion rips through the tank.

She keeps calling out over the radio for what seems like forever, even as the ruined shells of the vehicles smolder and the creatures disappear beneath the ground and do not burst forth again. The field is still, and the radio echoes back her own voice, and finally she gives the order to cease fire.

There are twenty-one men and women alive behind the barricades, including herself, when the sound of the last gunshot fades. She looks among them, searching for a superior officer to direct their next move- but they are all looking at her, and the realization hits her like a shockwave in the pit of her stomach.

 _I am the ranking officer._

She tries to speak but cannot find the words, and so Doran finds them for her. "Ma'am... what the hell just happened?"

"I..." She pauses, swallows, starts again. "We know now what killed the men and women of Akuze. We know why they couldn't fight back- and we had to figure it out the hard way. We lost a lot of good people out there figuring it out."

"How do we know they're all dead?" Carpenter asks; it is not a challenge, merely a question. "Shouldn't we go search the tanks?"

"From what Corporal Toombs tells me, the first one of these things only attacked when someone walked onto the field." _But why not when we found the colonists- what was different then?_ She cannot make sense of it. "They only stopped attacking when we backed off the field, and with no transports I won't send you back out there again." Shepard sighs. "God help me if there's anyone still alive out there, but I won't risk the rest of you to find out."

Twenty exhausted soldiers simply stare at her. No one speaks.

"And now..." her hands fall to her sides. God, I'm tired. "We get the hell off this planet."

"I say we nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure," Private Raith mutters from the back of the group- but it's enough to lighten the mood.

"Do any of you think the transport you were in might still be functional?" Each of the survivors shakes his or her head in the same insistent way. Whether destroyed by the creatures' direct strikes, dissolved by the acid she's sure now that they spit, or run headlong into a seemingly bottomless hole (there is no one from Chief Wu's Grizzly represented among the group clustered around her, but Chandler and Foster seem utterly convinced of what they saw and, certainly, there are only seven transports still visible of the eight that set out), their vehicles are destroyed. Wherever they go next, they will walk there.

"For now, everyone, get some rest. That's an order. I'll try to raise the ship, and we'll move back to the landing zone at first light. Anyone injured, see me or Gunnery Chief Adams." She lets herself breathe as the others nod and start to move- the fragments of the unit are still holding together.

They pull cots into the open and drag them a short ways up the hill, distancing themselves from the field and the dead; the four bodies within the camp are laid into the same black bags that hold the dead civilians and carried to the end of the nearest row. It is a relief to her to see them go- one less visible reminder of the others she has left to graves of metal and earth, at least for the time being.

Shepard, for her part, gathers as many of the small medical kits from the tents as she can find and sets herself up on one of the cots to wait for the wounded.

"Chief Shepard?" She turns toward the voice, somewhere in the darkness to her left. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Only if you come over here where I can see who's asking- but sure, hit me." She beckons into the dark and a shape emerges, recognizable as one of the newest privates. "Private Murphy, right?"

"Yes, ma'am." The girl takes a few steps closer, then lowers herself to sit on one of the flat-topped rocks that dot the terrain with her leg stretched out in front of her.

"You all right, Murphy? That leg looks like it's giving you trouble." It's as much for her own sake as the girl's that she asks; if Murphy can't run tomorrow, it will hold them all back. She can't quite get her head around being the ranking officer, not just yet- but all three lieutenants are gone, and she doesn't have a choice. No one else is going to die, not if she can help it.

The private shrugs. "Not really, ma'am. My ankle caught in the harness strap when Lieutenant Patel shoved me out of the Mako before he... before it blew. It just feels swollen, now."

"Normally I'd tell you to get that boot off, put your foot up with a chill pack. Tonight, Murphy- keep that boot laced. I need you on your feet tomorrow, and if you swell up so badly you can't get your kit back on..." Shepard sighs. _I'll carry you if I have to._ "But you didn't come over here for a lecture. What was your question?"

"How do you deal with this?" Murphy gestures vaguely toward the field. "I mean, we got the whole speech in Basic about grief and post-traumatic stress and all, but I..." The façade cracks a little; her lip trembles. "I've never seen anyone die before, ma'am. Does it get easier?"

"Yes. And no." Heads incline toward her. She pretends not to notice. "I've lost soldiers before- twice in five years- and it hurts. I won't tell you that you get used to it- you don't. I won't tell you that you'll forget about it in time- you won't. You'll remember. But you learn from your mistakes, and you keep fighting, and you keep looking forward even as you grieve."

She has spent enough time looking backward to know the truth of it, enough time lost to self-pity and self-loathing and sorrow deep enough to drown in- that time is gone, and yet she is grateful for it (as one kisses the hand that wounds, for the wisdom that comes with the pain).

"Does that start to answer it?"

Murphy nods. "Yes, ma'am... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take up your time."

"Don't apologize, Private. You need to talk, I'm here." But there is work to be done, and she turns her attention to the other wounded.

There are far fewer injured than she would have thought given the casualties the unit suffered; she needs only a few packets of medi-gel to tend the cuts and scrapes presented to her. Wounded and well alike, the soldiers settle back into the cots. Even those who volunteer to keep watch sit perched on stones, too tired or shaken to keep on their feet.

She gains nothing by delay, and so she pushes herself to her feet to walk toward the top of the hill.

The air around her is still as she stands looking over the fields; pillars of smoke rise into the sky like so many campfires. (She thinks of the burnt-spicy smell of Mindoir cedar, lets the memory build until she can taste it on her tongue. Better that than what lingers here now, the stink of charred metal and plastic and flesh that also reminds her of home- it threatens her nostrils even through the hardsuit's seals, though perhaps this is only her imagination.) She raises her hand to her ear, switching her communicator to the Montreal's primary channel.

"SSV _Montreal_ , this is Chief Tana Shepard, service number 5923-AC-2826, of the Akuze investigatory unit. Come in, _Montreal_."

 _Please, let them be in range._


	3. Part 3: Run to the Hills

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Part 3: Run To the Hills**

**Part 3: Run To the Hills**

 _March 13, 2177_

Static echoes in Shepard's ears for what seems like an age as she paces along the hilltop. She strains to hear something, anything meaningful beneath the haze of white noise- and suddenly there is a voice coming over the open channel and her shoulders sag a little in relief.

"This is Lieutenant Reynolds of the _SSV Montreal._ Identity confirmed, Chief Shepard- what's your status?" She has to pause for a moment to think of what she wants to say; the words threaten to come pouring out in a rush of incoherence and so she settles for the essentials.

"Requesting immediate mission termination and evacuation, Lieutenant. We have sustained heavy casualties-"

The interruption comes even before she pauses for breath. "Wait, wait... slow down, Shepard. You know I need the senior officer's order to terminate the mission- and what do you mean, heavy casualties?"

"Lieutenant Roberts is dead, sir. Patel and Phillips, too. I have thirty dead soldiers, sixty-seven dead colonists and zero functional transports, I'm standing on the edge of a field full of giant acid-spitting worm-things, and I am asking you to please enter the termination code so we can get off this planet." _So much for making sense._ It sounds like a propaganda movie straight out of the First Contact War- big bad aliens, murdered colonists, soldiers fighting for their lives (even on Mindoir they watched the vids, thinking themselves safe from such savageries; she was just a child, not even three years old but still she remembers clinging to Mom in fear of the monsters)- but there is no projector at the bottom of the hill, only soldiers curled on cots and smoke rising slowly into the sky.

She counts her steps in the silence that follows; she goes a full seven paces before he responds. "Is this some kind of joke, Shepard?"

"No, sir." There is nothing else to say.

"Jesus. You're really not kidding, are you?" Reynolds exhales slowly, his breath whistling over the channel. "All right, Chief. Code executed. I'll update the bridge and patch you through to set up your rendezvous point."

It's nearly 0400 and so one of the relief pilots is on duty; in typical backup fashion he starts whining as soon as Reynolds ends the briefing. The _Montreal_ , expecting a mission duration of at least three days, had already set course for a troop drop on Terra Nova and was just barely within reach of the long-range comm channel- any later and she would have lost them through the relay and needed the colony's assembly to reach them. _One stroke of good luck, finally._

"We're two hours from the relay, Shepard. You're sure you can't wait a day?" _Fucking flyboy_! Her eyes roll skyward as she opens her mouth to argue; Captain Fisher suddenly cuts in over the channel and she bites back the words. Shepard has served under Captain Fisher for almost two years and she has never once heard him swear- but there is a first time for everything, especially today.

"Turn this goddamn ship around, son, then go wake up Flight Lieutenant Mendez. You don't want to run an evac, you don't get to." Fisher's tone is pure steel.

The pilot stutters. "But sir-"

"Get the hell off my bridge, pilot. After you find Mendez, report down to me."

"Yes, sir." He sounds about to cry; she can't precisely bring herself to pity him. Something clicks off- the pilot's headset, she guesses- but her comm's still humming.

"Chief Shepard, I'll get a full mission report from you after you're back on the ship. We'll touch down at the original LZ for now- if what you told Reynolds is correct, we've got a lot of bodies to transport but I'd like to hear your assessment of that region before I drop my girl down into it. You're sure none of the lieutenants made it out?" The captain's drawl is especially heavy now, never a good sign (she read his file when she was first assigned to the _Montreal_ \- he was born in the New Orleans section of the Gulf Coast megalopolis, but after the floods of 2143 his family moved to the Martian colony. She only ever notices his accent when he's nervous about something, which isn't often).

"As sure as I can be, sir-" She ducks and throws her hands up over her face reflexively as another explosion rips through the air, but nothing reaches her at this distance; something red and glowing lands on the hillside below, bounces once, and smolders there as the echoes of the blast fade. "Sorry, Captain. All the transports are fragged and as far as I'm concerned the area's still hostile, so we haven't been able to do a proper search. But I can't raise them over the radio, sir, and I saw all three Makos go up... I heard Phillips screaming..."

He sighs. "Don't apologize, Chief. I'll give Mendez her instructions- we'll make a short FTL run and should be on the ground by 0900, then you can tell me all about these acid-spitting worm-things."

 _I'm never going to live this one down._ "You heard that, sir?"

"I keep my ear to the ground." Captain Fisher chuckles. "Good luck, Shepard. _Montreal_ out."

Shepard switches her comm back over to the unit's frequency as she makes her way back down the hill. Most of the privates are sleeping, curled up like schoolchildren at naptime on the cots, but her NCOs have stayed awake and look to her as she steps back in among them. Service Chief Thomas steps to the side, revealing the empty cot he'd been hiding; she sits down heavily and tilts her head to one side, letting her neck relax with a satisfying _pop_.

"Goddamn, I hate it when you do that." Adams crouches down beside her. "So are they coming back for us, or what?"

"They are. By the time we make the LZ they should already be there, or near to it. I'll split us into fireteams once the kiddos wake up, but I doubt we'll need them... it should be an easy jog back. Everyone alright with a five-man team?" The others nod, though Wang still looks worried behind her visor. Shepard forces a smile. _Got to be reassuring._ If she can make herself believe it, she can make them believe it. "We'll get out of here yet, guys."

She sends Wang and Thomas to rest; she's slept enough (three and a half hours- Gunny Ellison believed anything over three was a luxury and after a few weeks of Basic it was almost true) and has far too much adrenaline flowing to sleep even if she'd wanted to. Her neck is still stiff, though, and she cracks it again but the tension doesn't release.

"Shepard, if you want a neck rub you could just ask... besides, it's not every day I get the chance to work my magic on my commanding officer." Adams nudges her over with his hip and steals half the cot as his hands come to rest on her shoulders. Despite her better judgment she turns away from him, waiting for the press of fingertips into her muscles- and instead gets a few half-hearted prods against the collar of her hardsuit. "Um. Maybe I didn't think this one out- take off your helmet?"

She remembers Private Singh vomiting into the dirt and shakes her head emphatically. "No way- not unless you want me puking on you. But if you want to rub my neck when we get back on ship, I wouldn't complain. Or bust you down to Service Chief for sexually harassing your CO." Adams pulls back from her like her suit's on fire. "God. I'm kidding, you know."

"Yeah, yeah." But he laughs and she turns back to face him. "Consider your locker taped shut, Shepard. I think we've both got some stress to burn."

They sit together on the cot, heads together, and reminisce as Akuze's star begins its slow ascent over the horizon. There will be a time and a place for grief, but it is not here; grieving is best done in safety, and so she pushes it away for now with nostalgia.

 _(She sits in the hayloft for nearly an hour, holding her unfolded pocketknife tightly; blood trickles into her eye from the cut on her forehead as she stares down at the barn floor. She cannot stand it any longer. Part of her knows what it means, the fire and the screams and the gunshots, but still she needs to_ see _\- Dad always told her to trust her eyes- so she lowers the ladder and climbs back down. There is no one visible down the hill through the crack in the door; she slips out the gap and runs to hide behind the nearest tree. She can see nothing moving as she goes, slowly making her way into the open until she is halfway down and there is Jacob, still and silent and bloodied and dead._

 _The shotgun is on the ground beside him, still cocked. She lifts it cautiously and carries it with her, though her hands have started to shake again by the time she nears the houses. They are still burning, flames licking at windows and pushing out at the roofline; the front doors of both houses hang ajar and there are heaps of clothing and belongings scattered in the yard. No- not only clothing: Mother in her favorite green dress, curled protectively around Mara; Ben a few feet away, his lucky bat still in his hand; Jacob's parents, splayed against the doorframe of their home; Dad..._

 _He is pinned up against her favorite tree with wicked-looking knives, and a familiar lump of white and brown fur rests at his feet. She reaches down, scratches behind Loki's ears. Her hand comes away bloody._

 _There is a noise, somewhere behind her; she whirls and levels the shotgun. There is a figure at the back corner of the house, facing away from her and rummaging through a pile of machinery parts that used to sit in the shed- it looks human on first glance but it isn't. The skin is wrong. She moves a step closer. It doesn't hear her or doesn't care, keeps pawing through the heap. She takes another step, then another. It draws a knife from its belt, slashing at a tangle of wire, and the curve of the blade is the same as the ones holding Dad to the tree. She will grieve in days and years to come; there is nothing left within her now but rage._

 _Her vision narrows; the only thing she sees is the slimy grey-green skin of the alien's head as she braces the shotgun against her shoulder and pulls the trigger. She has never killed a man before- never killed anything before, really, save a few hunting trips with Dad- but this is not a man._

 _As she recocks the shotgun, she notes the black blood that drips onto the ground. Humans bleed red. This was not a man.)_

When there is enough light to see, Shepard begins to wake the sleeping soldiers. They leave the cots and their fallen comrades behind and form into lines at the top of the hill, munching on ration bars through the smallest possible gaps in their visors. She assigns herself the remainder of her squad, now five soldiers where once she led seven, and divides the others between Adams, Thomas and Wang. After one last check of the maps, they march.

It is easy to forget how quickly the transports cover ground- though they drove barely twenty minutes from the LZ to the settlement and another ten to the fields, it's at least 15 klicks from here to rescue. But their unit has marched for much longer and with heavier packs before, and the ground is nearly flat. She cannot help but feel exposed, crossing open terrain with no shelter and no cover save a few scattered boulders.

"At least Captain Fisher didn't try to bring the _Montreal_ down on the other side of the field, right?" Corporal Doran, just off her right shoulder, somehow reads her mind. "We try to fight those things on foot, we'd really be screwed."

Murphy and her bad ankle keep up well for the first few kilometers as they jog along, but after a while the girl starts to lag behind. Shepard looks back, even as Singh and Alonzo fall in line with Murphy; the girl squeaks in surprise as Alonzo slips his arms under hers and Singh lifts her feet. "Your chariot, princess."

"Put me down, guys. I can run." She swats at Alonzo's hand in irritation.

"You can limp, Murph. At that rate we'd get back on ship by dinnertime, and I was planning on breakfast." Private Alonzo grins, then looks to Shepard. She shrugs and chuckles. Murphy, for her part, launches into what has to be the filthiest cadence Shepard has ever heard- and after nearly five years she's heard quite a few. After that, they each take a turn at leading and their voices echo across the landscape.

 _"Hi-dee, hi-dee, Christ almighty, who the hell are we?_   
_The finest in the galaxy- Alliance infantry!"_

 _Only a few klicks to go._ She can almost see the LZ from here, just over the swell of a distant hill. There's a break in the terrain ahead- it looks almost like a probe crash site from this distance, a raised-rimmed crater marring the landscape, and she makes a note to detour around it as she surveys the ground they still have to cover. Suddenly, the roar of engines pierces the air, and twenty-one heads snap skyward as the _SSV Montreal_ soars over them.

"0830- ladies and gentlemen, be sure to thank Lieutenant Mendez when you see her. She's half an hour early." Sleek, polished and powerful, the cruiser seems closer than she knows it is; it doesn't seem nearly so large when she's aboard, but the hold alone carried their eight transports and the other units' too. She keeps the group moving as the ship disappears into a swirl of dust and the ground shivers beneath them in time with the firing thrusters.

Soon the thrusters are silent, but the ground still vibrates beneath Shepard's feet as they pass around the crater. Gonzales breaks formation, runs up to its rim. "Huh. Nothing in there at all... I wonder what made this." Raith and Chandler break away to join Gonzales; she moves to chastise them, to get them back into ranks and heading toward the ship, but stops when Toombs grabs for her arm.

"Chief- the vibration. Like before, like a generator-" and it is déjà vu all over again as the three soldiers at the crater's edge vanish, replaced by a column of red-brown scales topped by too-familiar lights.

 _This can't be happening._ She grabs for the distress flare, tucked in among the grenades at her belt. With a sharp snap, she cracks it and throws it in the direction of the ship, praying that someone will see it; sparks burst forth and crimson smoke rises in tight spirals into the air. "Everyone, get to the ship! Don't look back, just keep running until you get metal under your feet."

But the thing is next to them, and even as she runs from it she hears the liquid-sloshing sound behind her and hopes it is not aimed at her. A moment later, she knows it's not- frantic screams, male and female alike, rip through her. She turns to look and wishes she hadn't- they'd put Murphy down for a moment, Singh and Alonzo, and couldn't pick her up fast enough to get out of the way. Their armor melts from them like candle wax.

Shepard sprints toward a nearby boulder, seeking some kind of cover; she is nearly there when the ground explodes beneath her and launches her face-first at the rock.

Her vision blurs in a haze of pain at the impact and she slumps to the ground, stunned for a moment. There is something sharp lodged against the skin of her forehead, another lancing pain above her lip. Her hands reach up, exploring, and find her faceplate shattered; when her sight clears she still cannot see for all the cracks in the visor. The rotten-egg smell of Akuze fills her nose and mouth, turning her stomach, and she removes her broken helmet to retch until the nausea passes.

She manages to gather her legs back beneath her and crouches behind the stone, pulling her shotgun free. Her face is throbbing- she pulls a shard of visor from her eyebrow and blood flows down her cheek, pools in the corner of her eye and she blinks ferociously to clear it. One of the things is nearly on top of her, barely five meters away on the other side of the boulder; she raises the gun and unloads two shots into it with no visible result.

"Anyone with grenades, use 'em if you've got 'em," she shouts into the chaos even as she grabs a grenade from her belt. The pin comes free and the grenade soars toward the creature. Her aim is good; it sticks solidly to the thing just before it explodes and tears a chunk from its side. It shrieks and sways, but doesn't withdraw and so she launches another grenade- Adams, now beside her, throws a third and Corporal Toombs unloads his pistol into it. Two more blasts tear at the creature's flesh, and with a last scream it arches and withdraws beneath the ground.

She looks to Adams and Toombs and moves to run. The thing is gone, though out of the corner of her eye she can see the first still thrashing and spitting as a cluster of her soldiers continue to fire on it. After a few steps there is a shout from behind her- just noise at first, but then she hears her name and looks back. The hole in the earth, wide and deep to begin with, is collapsing in on itself; even as she watches the ground goes out from beneath Adams' feet and he disappears from view. The corporal, barely on solid terrain, stops- and a strand of blue-green light winds itself around his ankle and jerks back viciously.

Five running steps bring her to the edge of the crater and she slides down onto one hip, reaching out for Toombs' arms. Her right hand catches his; his left hand is occupied by his pistol and he will not let it drop.

"Toombs, drop the gun and give me your hand!" She pulls back with all her strength but with the creature still holding on she can barely move him. He fires two shots blindly into the depths of the hole, where she can see nothing except the lights.

He shakes his head. "I can't get it off me, Chief-"

Something cracks loudly and Toombs screams, tightening his grip on her hand. She throws her weight back, digging her feet into the dirt, and the top of his helmet clears the edge of the hole. With a moan of pain, he finally lets his pistol fall and reaches up with his other arm, but their hands never meet- with one ferocious yank, he nearly disappears again. She cannot hold him; she tries desperately and refuses to let go even as her own arm pops and a spike of pain lances up into her shoulder, but in the end she cannot hold on any longer. Her hand opens, and she watches him fall away from her.

 _I am not going to lose all my soldiers. I am not going to lose all my soldiers._ She repeats it in her head, mantralike, and slams her fists against the dirt in frustration- or rather, she tries. Her right arm will not do as she commands. Her head is still throbbing and her vision blurs for a moment, but still she looks for the rest of the unit. There are fewer of them standing, now, but they are still fighting.

Her legs, at least, are uninjured. Shepard moves toward the remaining few (even as she moves, the creature throws itself against the ground and crushes two more men beneath it) and signals the retreat. They are only too happy to follow her, the handful that are left, and they run together toward rockier ground and the hope of safety.

They do not make it there. The thing vanishes, but somehow senses just where she means to lead her soldiers; it emerges again in front of them, blocking their path. Its mouth lolls open ominously. She reaches for Doran and Carpenter, still next to her after everything that has happened, to push them to the side, away from the torrent of acid she knows is coming- and instead, Doran shoves her away with her full strength and takes the brunt of it herself. She hits the ground hard and rolls to the side, trying to block out the screaming that again echoes in her ears.

When she stands again, she has lost track of everything but the creature.

 _One grenade left._ Her right arm is numb below the elbow and she cannot move it; she pulls the grenade pin with her teeth and spits it out as the creature towers over her, swaying from side to side. She counts. _One. Two. Three._ It opens its mouth-

Shepard lets the grenade fly. It's a poor throw, left-handed as it was, but it is enough- the blast takes the top of the thing's head cleanly off and she shouts out loud for joy. It thrashes for another moment, then disappears, sliding back beneath the earth.

She wonders, for a moment, why she cannot see the list of hardsuit reads. She needs to check on the rest of her soldiers. They are so close to the ship, so very close... she remembers again that her visor is broken, her helmet discarded. She'll have to move, gather them back together herself; they must be nearby. Her head aches terribly.

Then, strangely, she cannot see anything at all. She does not feel herself falling, and she does not notice when she hits the ground.


	4. Part 4: Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Part 4: Revelations**

**Part 4: Revelations**

 _March 14, 2177  
SSV Montreal_

The world is spinning.

She forces herself to open her eyes, though the light stings and the surroundings blur, and soon enough she can focus again; she is not where she should be. There is no wind against her skin and no dust to creep into her nose and mouth, though she rests with her back against the ground- _no, no, that isn't right._ Akuze was hot, so warm she could feel it even through her hardsuit. All she can feel now is cool air on her bare skin and a throbbing pain behind her eyes.

The ceiling is smooth, with sterile metal where the sky ought to be, and she looks around to orient herself; the wall beside her, too, is metal and plastic, with brightly flashing lights and monitors shifting and changing, displaying her heart rate and brainwave patterns and a half-dozen other things.

"Chief Shepard?" A shadow falls across her face- the voice is familiar, though not one of her unit. She turns her head toward the speaker. Close-cropped dark hair frames a concerned expression; Nurse Molina hovers above her. _I'm in the medical bay. I'm on the_ Montreal.

"Welcome back, Chief. How are you feeling?"

 _I'm alive._

It is sweet and bittersweet, to be alive when so many are not; everything she wants to say turns to ashes on her tongue but she tries to force the words out regardless. She needs to know what happened- she tries to remember but the images scatter and slide away and she cannot gather them back.

"Ouch..." This was not what she meant to say, but as she tries to sit up and catch glimpses of the other beds a spike of pain lances through her skull. The chill of the metal table is a mercy as the nurse lowers her gently down to her back; she shivers, but the coolness soothes her aching head. Something winds its way, liquid-smooth, up the veins of her arm.

"I thought as much. You've got quite a lump on your head." Molina sets the empty syringe aside. "And you've been out for-" she leans over one of the displays, fingertips delicate against the screen; the monitor chimes. "Four hours, give or take a little."

( _She is seven years old, and Mother is leaning over her with a look somewhere between panic and chastisement when she opens her eyes. The bright star of Mindoir- they always called it the sun, though its true name was something much different- hovers on the horizon and she squints._

 _"She's awake!" Mother calls back over her shoulder. She tries to turn her head to look up at the tree, but can't; something rigid cradles her chin and encircles her neck, and she can't see around the doctor. Standing just next to Mother, the doctor cups her face in his antiseptic-smelling hands and studies her for a moment; someone slides her gently onto a hard backboard as the grownups talk quietly among themselves._

 _She isn't listening, really, as Mother scolds and Dad comforts and the doctor tries to explain, in his multisyllabic doctor way, what's going to happen when she gets to the clinic- and then, when they finally start to move, she can see it. She laughs and points victoriously even as they tell her to keep still._

 _"I told you I'd get all the way to the top, Jacob!"_

 _The red ribbon, knotted to the top of the tallest tree in the neighborhood, waves in the breeze like a battle flag.)_

"Did they see the flare?" Shepard's eyes flutter closed. White lights dance and twist against the backs of her eyelids; she remembers other lights, blue-green against the sky. "I was totally out, I think... I don't remember at all when they came for us."

"I'm not sure; the captain's on his way up, he should be able to answer your questions, Chief." Footsteps cross the room- the rhythmic click of the nurse's heels across the ship's floor. "They just radioed me and the doc to prep the bed once they figured out they needed one less body ba-" Molina hisses in pain and someone whispers angrily, just quiet enough that Shepard cannot hear it.

"The captain will be here in just a minute, Chief Shepard," another voice chimes in. She opens her eyes again, just in time to see Doctor Nilsson practically dragging Molina into the lab room. His voice rings out angrily just as the door slides shut, but she doesn't bother to eavesdrop.

The morphine takes effect- at least, she thinks, it was probably morphine. Her pain ebbs; her wakefulness hooks itself on the tide of pain and drifts away, too. She dreams of Lowe bleeding beneath her hands, of Corporal Toombs falling away into the darkness, of winding columns of lights rising to the sky. When she surfaces again, the captain is there, perched on a chair with his head in his hands.

"Captain Fisher." Shepard struggles to rise and salute; her legs refuse to gather themselves and her arm won't come free of the blankets. "Sorry, sir. I can't-"

He looks up at her and smiles, just barely. "At ease, Shepard. Welcome back."

"Everyone keeps saying that, sir- it's like I'm the only one here."

It sinks in, finally, at that moment.

The words still won't come and suddenly the air won't, either- she cannot breathe, and despite a dozen desperate gasps she starts to shake and rolls to her side, retching. _Breathe, Shepard. Breathe_. The words echo in her head, and it takes her a moment to realize that the captain's saying them, too.

The room blurs, and when she brings her hand to her eyes (only the left; the right- _damn it!-_ still refuses to cooperate) the friction of skin against skin is enough to hammer in another spike of pain. She imagines, even as she releases her hold on consciousness, that she feels Mother's touch against her hair. But her family is dead, and her squad is dead; only she and the Captain are here in the med bay, and the hand smoothing her hair from her forehead is not her mother's.

* * *

It is two days later by the time the doctor clears her to leave infirmary quarters. She is given temporary bunking with the communications team- she cannot and would not stay in the unit's old space, one occupied pod in the midst of dozens of empty ones. Even as she goes to gather her things from her locker, her footsteps echo off vacant seats and silent walls. She sits, cross-legged, before her locker, and fumbles to open it.

Her elbow was only dislocated, not broken, though she still wears a sling ( _you take that off and I'll bolt it to your neck_ , Dr. Nilsson said); her head is only cut and bruised and perhaps a little concussed. Despite that she may as well be a plague-bearer. She'd been starving when she left med bay, and made her way to the mess- so many people stared as she chose a sandwich from the dispenser that she choked it down in five bites, swallowed a few mouthfuls of scalding coffee and bolted.

She turns herself and presses her fingertip against the panel, then reaches across with her left hand to open the door before the lock clicks shut again. Her locker, as always, is organized- one last vestige of the foster home.

 _(After the third time her roommate stole her school-issued digipad to pawn for cigarettes or glowdust or whatever the guys down the street were cooking, Shepard learned to stack her belongings so the tiniest out-of-order adjustment would send everything crashing down. She was never sure whether it was that- or the razor blades that Nisha, in the room next door, took to taping between her stacked holovid discs- that finally stopped the thieving.)_

Her rucksack hangs from its hook inside the door; she pulls her things out, one by one, and tucks them away carefully. Extra pants, her lucky hairband (she slips it over her left wrist with a snap; of course, she wasn't wearing it on this mission), a few folded strips of electrical tape. There are footsteps behind her, quiet but still too loud for the empty room, and she turns to face them.

The captain holds out his hand, palm down, anticipating; she gets halfway to her feet anyway before he gets the words out. "At ease, Shepard." She salutes, awkwardly, left-handed. "Ready for your debriefing?"

 _Well, here goes._ Shepard smiles, nods, not ready by a long shot. "Yes, sir."

He leans against one of the weapons tables, activates his omnitool- "Tell me what happened, Chief."

And she does.

Forty minutes later her throat aches from speaking, though her eyes are dry. "It was like something out of a movie, or a science-fiction novel- the whole time, it was like it wasn't real. Like if I really made myself open my eyes, I'd wake up."

 _(It is her eleventh birthday. She tears happily through the paper of her last gift, already wearing the new shoes she'd opened earlier that morning. Her present sits solidly in her hands; she reads the letters printed across the front. "_ Dune _\- Dad, what is it?"_

 _She had never seen a book before. It was the two hundredth anniversary edition, Dad explained- a real book, paper and leather and glue. It had been his favorite when he was her age, though his copy, like all the stories she had ever read, existed only on a digipad. He had it shipped all the way out to Mindoir, just for her, and in the first month of her eleventh year she reads it five times._

 _Five years later, like everything else, it burned.)_

"And no one knew what we were walking into? Those things took us apart, Captain. They grabbed us, ground us up and spit us out again like a fucking thresher before we even knew what was happening-" she bites her lip. "Sorry, sir."

"I'm going to assume a thresher is some sort of farm equipment?" The captain looks down at her; she nods. "We didn't do much farming on Mars, when I was a kid... mostly digging, research- and stop apologizing, Shepard."

"Yes, sir. Sor-" She cuts herself off, abruptly, and stares down at her rucksack. _Guilty conscience, Shepard?_

 _One-two_ , the clicking of keys; Captain Fisher shuts off his omnitool and just stares for a minute, then chuckles. "Better. Now, off the record, Chief- where do you see yourself going from here?"

"Sir?" Shepard blinks, and shakes her head. "With all due respect, sir, I just watched my entire unit die. Half of those deaths occurred under my direct command." She pushes herself to stand with one hand, the other- still in the sling- held close against her stomach. "Assuming I still have a future with the Alliance, I haven't had time to give much thought to what it might be."

"Still have a-" the captain shakes his head, chuckles softly. The thought drifts, unuttered, into the air and dissipates. "You're a good soldier, Shepard. Better than good. You didn't go from Second-class to Chief in five years by sitting on your ass, and I don't intend to keep you sitting there now- but I think you're going to need some time out of the field."

"So, I'm grounded, then." She sighs. "Better than a court-martial by a long shot, but I didn't enlist to push supplies on Arcturus. I want to fight, sir. Put a gun in my hand and I'll go wherever you tell me to go. You know I can handle it." One booted heel kicks shut her locker door as she swings the pack onto her undamaged shoulder.

Fisher pulls a folded letter from an inner pocket of his uniform and shakes it, once. The sharp creases of the paper snap open; he hands it to her. "Of course I know you can handle it, Shepard, which is why you'd better pass." She cocks her head to one side (then the other, as her neck spasms) as her eyes flicker across the page. "Congratulations, Second Lieutenant Shepard."

"This is a joke, right? You're not serious." Incredulous, she stares up from the page at the captain. "So now everyone pops out of their lockers and says 'Surprise! We're still alive, not buried five feet down in some godforsaken worm tunnel, and this was all an elaborate prank to congratulate you on your fake promotion'?" Her teeth sink into her lower lip, hard enough that she tastes it, copper-tangy on the tip of her tongue.

"No, and no." He adjusts his jacket; it falls back into place, pristine as always. "You were nominated a month ago- the confirmation only came through on the twelfth. It was just lousy timing, Shepard; I'm sorry. But the promotion is real." His shoulders rise, and fall, and settle again, slumped perhaps a little lower than they had been. "I wish your friends could have been here to celebrate with you."

 _Me, too._ She slips her hand into her pack's side pocket; her fingers close around a piece of tape.

"Yes, sir." One corner of her mouth tilts upward. "When do I start?"

* * *

She composes, in the next eleven days, fifty letters. Only seven were technically needed, for the members of the squad under her command, but something in the back of her mind will not let her stop until the last is done- she has always found the official notices cold and impersonal. _Families deserve better than that- "I regret to inform you..."_ She drops them at the mail dispatch when they reach Arcturus.

On her arrival she had been assigned to an OCS class assembling on April 1st; she considers asking to be reclassed on principle but eventually decides against it. She has a few days to spare, regardless, and there is little point to sitting in her quarters and sulking for the remainder of her leave, so on the night before the memorial service she finds herself in Club Zero for the first time in months. When she has lost soldiers in the past, the rest of the unit would gather as a group, have a drink in memory of each fallen comrade- but on reflection this seems a poor idea in these circumstances.

So she sits down at the bar, to have one drink for fifty dead. The most expensive drink on the list is some type of Earth-import whisky that's ten years older than her; she sips slowly, reciting each name to herself with each burn at the back of her throat. Even when she finishes, the scent lingers in her nose and on her tongue like smoke after a brushfire.

One drink is enough, tonight, and it is strange to sit alone. The bar is crowded and yet the chairs on either side of her sit empty, the mourning band around her left arm an intangible shield against others coming too close. She remembers the press of soldiers against the bar, the night they graduated out of basic; she remembers dancing, crowding the edges of the dance floor with drink in hand to feel the beat thudding in her chest. Tonight her glass is empty and she rises to her feet to leave, bypassing the dance floor and walking with long strides down the exit corridor. She remembers, too, as she passes the janitor's closet, and reaches out with one hand to give the door a halfhearted thump.

 _(They are laughing together as she feels the fabric of her shirt give way, and that only makes them laugh harder; his breath is warm on her skin, his mouth brushes against her ribs.)_

From behind the door, someone lets out a yelp, quickly silenced- and then, two voices join together in poorly stifled mirth. Shepard stops, staring at the door. She stands, transfixed, for a moment, not knowing whether to smile or scream or both.

And then, clinging to the wall like a lifeline, she does the only thing she can think of, and laughs until her legs give out beneath her.

 _Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori._ \- Horace


	5. Epilogue: Déjà Vu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Epilogue: Déjà Vu**

**Epilogue: Déjà Vu**

 _SSV Tai Shan  
March 15, 2177_

The Voyager Cluster is quiet, for the most part. There are scattered mercenary vessels and pirate cruisers, to be sure, but few of them are bold or stupid enough to challenge a Dreadnought like the _Tai Shan_. Communications Officer Xiao Mei keeps scanning all the communications channels anyway, partially because it's her job but mostly out of boredom. She'd enlisted out of high school to get away from the monotony of Eden Prime, to escape from the endless fields to the brightness of the stars- and, six years later, sits behind a terminal all day.

 _You should be grateful,_ Mother says in every vid-mail. _You could have ended up like your cousin Wen, sent to some horrible planet like that Mindoir place they deployed him to- you know what your aunt and uncle pay to keep him in that hospital now? At least you're safe, baobei._

And every time, she smiles and nods and wishes she were anywhere but behind her monitor as she flips from channel to channel- _ah. What's that?_

The speakers flare to life, drowning the dull hum of the engine beneath her feet. Not human language; almost static, harsh in her ears but too repetitive. The transcription function on the console initiates, recording the signal. Ones and zeros... binary code fills the screen too fast for her eyes to process- then suddenly, it terminates as abruptly as it began. She waits, but it doesn't recur. She activates the translation protocol, though she doesn't expect much from it. It's probably just a burst from a mining probe, coordinates for a metal deposit or suchlike.

 _CERBERUSTRANSMISSION#A103RL58_

"What the hell? This is no probe transmission." She doesn't realize she's said it out loud until someone shushes her from across the comm bay. Her eyes flicker across the screen, left to right, left to right, as the rest of the message displays itself on her terminal along with approximated location coordinates.

 _The captain should see this._ With a sharp tug, the hard copy strip comes free from the printer slot. Mei pushes the monitor away and turns to face the station next to hers- hopefully Shane can watch her console for a few minutes.

"Shane?" From this angle, his eyes are glazed over. She reaches over and snaps her fingers, just next to his ear. "Hey. Shane!"

He startles. "Mei? What- sorry. Dozed off."

"I noticed. I just picked up a weird transmission that I was going to take down to Callahan. Can you watch my station for a sec? I'll pick you up a cup of coffee on my way back." Her knuckles crack as she stands and stretches; it's closer to shift end than she'd thought, and she's been sitting for hours.

"Splash of milk and two sugars, babe- ow!" She flicks his ear as she walks past.

"I told you not to call me that when we're on duty, Shane. I'll be back."

Two of the navigators look up and wave from their poker game as she walks through the map room on her way to the stairs. The corporal on watch duty salutes as she passes; she suppresses a smile. _That's definitely the best thing about finally making lieutenant rank after all the hassle of OCS- finally being the one getting the salutes_. When she reaches the quarters level, the captain's cabin door is open, as it usually is.

She knocks tentatively on the frame of the open door. "Captain Callahan? Sorry to bother you, sir, but-"

"No bother at all, Lieutenant Xiao. What can I do for you?" He swivels his desk chair to face her from across the room.

"Captain, I intercepted this transmission a few minutes ago, and I thought it was something you should see." The cabin is relatively small; she crosses it in a few steps, hands the hard copy sheet to him, and stands at attention as he reads.

CERBERUS TRANSMISSION #A103RL58|  
CLASSIFIED LEVEL 5 CLEARANCE|  
START TRANSMISSION| _  
project harvest phase 1 successful/behavior patterns charted with transmission to follow/research subject acquired/_ _  
phase 2 initiated/more subjects are needed/please advise/  
_ END TRANSMISSION

The captain frowns down at the readout, then raises his eyes to hers. "At ease, Lieutenant. Where did this originate?"

"Somewhere in Yangtze system, as far as the localizer could tell. But there's nothing out there, sir. No human colonies, no acknowledged corporation outposts, no military installations. The archive lists it as an uninhabited area." She takes a deep breath, shifts her stance, tries and fails to relax. "And the wording- it just bothers me, sir. Mission? Research subject?"

She pauses as the captain raises his hand- but no, it's meant to calm her, not to quiet her. "I agree with you- at best, this sounds like some kind of unauthorized corporation outpost. At worst, well..." He sighs. "I'll forward this on to the brass at Arcturus."

"Yes, sir." The knot in her stomach unties, if only a little.

"And don't worry, Lieutenant- I'll make sure to mention who intercepted it in the first place. I like my crew to get credit where it's due." He turns back to his desk. "Dismissed, Lieutenant."

"Sir." She salutes, turns on her heel and exits the captain's cabin. As she makes her way back to the communications center, coffee in hand, she is unable to shake the feeling that something is terribly wrong.

* * *

 _On April 3, 2177, the_ SSV Tai Shan _returned to Arcturus Station after concluding its patrol of the Voyager cluster._

 _On April 4, 2177, Captain William Callahan was found dead in his Arcturus Station apartment of a single bullet wound to the right temple, his pistol on the floor beside him. After a brief investigation, his death was ruled a suicide. His widow unsuccessfully appealed the coroner's verdict; her primary point of contention was that Captain Callahan was left-handed._

 _On April 9, 2177, Second Lieutenant Xiao Mei failed to report to the_ Tai Shan _at the conclusion of shore leave. A review of security logs showed only that she left her temporary quarters on the morning of April 6th and never returned. Her family has offered a 10,000-credit reward for any information on her current whereabouts._

* * *

CERBERUS TRANSMISSION #A103RT82| _  
_CLASSIFIED LEVEL 5 CLEARANCE|  
START TRANSMISSION|  
communications breach secured/new encryption protocol initiated/harvest phase 2 progressing well/second subject acquired/more to follow _  
_END TRANSMISSION


End file.
